MMOs Nostalgia Thread – Part 3

Last week I started a thing and this morning I am continuing it. There has been a thread going around Twitter asking you to list all of the MMOs that you have played in the past, even for a day. I quickly realized this was not going to fit into a tweet and instead I have turned it into a trip down memory lane as I talk about a bunch of different games. Were I planning this better I would have started it on a Monday so that all the posts could have been contained within a single week but that is not a thing that I did. Instead it spans a weekend and has been broken up by an AggroChat post. Today I continue that journey as we have covered thirty games to this point and my goal is to talk about the next fifteen on the list.

Star Trek Online

So one of the things that I need you to understand about Star Trek Online and me is the fact that while I enjoy Star Trek quite a bit… I wouldn’t call myself a Trekkie or Trekker or whatever the current favored version of that is. Star Wars was my jam and I always struggled believing that the world of Star Trek was ever our future, given how we can’t seem to even get everyone in a single state to agree on a common goal let alone all of humanity. Deep Space Nine for reference is my favorite series, which is the one where they are in a space station in hostile territory trying to hold together a tentative peace. So all of that together is why I was curious about this game but also why I largely bounced off of it. I feel like I am not engaged enough with Star Trek as a whole to really have this speak to me. I’ve returned a few times over the years since beta testing it and it has never really done it for me. I greatly appreciate the game that it is and the people that love it, because it seems like a genuinely good experience if you are into it.

DC Universe Online

I am not entirely certain why I am not playing this game. On paper everything about it seems tailored to my specific tastes. It is a more action oriented MMORPG where you play a super hero set in the DC universe and based on everything I remember about it I enjoyed it quite a bit. I liked the whole side tale of Booster Gold introducing you to everything in the DC Universe. I made it through I think three zones before I sort of just petered out and stopped playing. I was going the Batman archetype given that he will probably always be my favorite super hero in the DC universe… even as a little kid I was team Batman. The only thing that I can think is that probably some other game released and distracted me from it, which happens pretty often. I’ve returned a few times but I have to admit the free to play conversion damaged my joy because one of my favorite things about the game was the way that you unlocked costume components and I remember logging back in after the conversion and having some of my favorite looks removed. I keep thinking I will return and start from scratch but that has yet to happen. Side note this is one of the first MMOs I can remember to show up on Consoles making it a bit of a leader in that notion on the PlayStation 3.

Mythos

Image result for mythos game

The Diablo Killer that never was. Mythos was super interesting to me because at that time I was very into a game called Fate which in itself was a Diablo style game but introduced really neat pet interactions. Travis Baldree the creator of that game joined with a bunch of folks formerly of Blizzard North to create Flagship Studios and one of the games that they were working on with the spiritual successor of Fate called Mythos. I remember beta testing this but I don’t think it ever actually made it out of beta before Flagship shuttered. It was doing a lot of interesting things and I remember it having a lot of traditional MMORPG trappings of having a common hub that allows players to interact freely and then instanced areas for you to go off and explore. With the death of Mythos, Travis went over to Runic games and Torchlight happened which is very much a spiritual successor to both Fate and Mythos. I remember enjoying Mythos quite a bit but honestly the lines blur a bit between it, Fate and Torchlight at times.

Hellgate London

I hold such a massive candle for this game that it isn’t even funny. You can’t talk about Mythos without talking about Hellgate London, the game from Flagship Studios that did launch… was received poorly due to extremely difficulties and ultimately caused the collapse of the game studio. This project had a lot of pedigreed names associated with it but probably the biggest two were Bill Roper and David Brevik. Still to this day it has one of my favorite cinematic trailers and while the 3D graphics look dated it still tells a really cool story. I loved the concept of the game in part because I loved Doom growing up and I was super into the Hell on Earth post apocalyptic setting. The game suffered significant problems with network play but I remember subscribing to the game and House Stalwart having an active guild. I remember being super engaged in the first event that was based on Guy Fawkes day. I am pretty sure I stayed subbed to the game until they announced the death of the studio in July of 2008. I have been briefly excited and disappointed as this corpse has been resurrected a few times. I would love someone to buy this IP and then do a modern game with it.

Rift

This is the game that got me to quit World of Warcraft for the first time. Now I had been a “WoW Tourist” many times, where I would play another game for a period of time only to return back to the fold once the infection had run its course. Rift was the game that made me change my religion… if only for a short period of time. In fact I was so bought into this concept that I rebranded my blog to be a Rift fan site for awhile. When I log into the official Rift forums, my account is still flagged as a fan site which cracks me up a bit. I got to know the team, some of which I am still in infrequent but friendly contact with. On paper this is the game that I always wanted, one where I could forge my own class out of a bunch of different skill trees. It gave me a tank that not only had charge but if I did my spec in just the right way… had death grip as well. I think the problem that we suffered is that we were not a serious enough guild to make much progress in the raids, but that there wasn’t enough serious but casual content to hold our attention or feel like we had a path forward. I returned at least five separate times and revitalized my love for the game even if it meant I was mostly just soloing. Rift still is high on my list of games that I have played the most of over the years, but I have not returned since Trion was sold to Gamigo. I have no clue if my characters are still in their same state or not. When all of my friends who worked there were let go during this transition… I have to admit that a lot of my attachment also faded away.

Star Wars the Old Republic

Star Wars the Old Republic was the next big WoW Killer on the list. Once the hold World of Warcraft held on me was broken, I never really returned to having that one game that I was playing all of the time. SWTOR was a game that we all knew we were going to play and I remember once again trying to organize heavily and get everyone that I knew would be playing together in the same guild. I wish I had partaken of raiding in this game, but I was just burnt out on the concept after failing to really get it started in Rift. I think partially it was a time frame sort of issue, that when the raids were going on it was happening at a time that was less than opportune for me. My leveling experience was super interesting in that I decided to group up with a friend and do a dedicated play through where I as a Jedi Guardian and he as a Jedi Consular would experience all of the content together. You could even duo dungeons with us each bringing a companion and it more or less worked. A half dozen or so years ago I spent Christmas Break playing through all of the stories that I had not already seen and this game really is a master class in the Bioware formula. I am so thankful that I was able to experience it all, and while vastly different… I still really enjoy the Fallen Empire and Eternal Throne storylines. The free to play conversion also damaged this game a bit so that I have zero interest in ever playing it unless I am subscribing. Too many silly restrictions.

TERA

TERA has the weird distinction of being the last physical PC game that I’ve bought. Even then it was only because there was no viable digital delivery option and the only place that had a copy left was Gamestop. This game was absolutely a case of the internet Zeitgeist grabbing ahold of me and making me want to play a game… and then almost immediately feeling buyers remorse. Like TERA is doing some interesting things but as a whole I just don’t love the game. It is a game that feels like it is slow walking through the paces of being sufficiently fantasy enough to past muster but at the same time sorta soulless. I can’t tell you ANYTHING AT ALL about the story of this game. I just remember action based combat and a weird class that had a lance that telescopically extended when you went to attack. I mean it was an enjoyable week I am sure but I am pretty sure I didn’t play past that.

Blade and Soul

There is a side tale that can be told here. I have a lot of trouble getting engaged and enjoying localized South Korean MMORPGs. I keep trying them, because really there are no new North American MMORPGs in the works and I keep ending up disappointed. Blade and Soul is being stuck in here out of the proper chronology because we didn’t actually get the localized copy until much much later. Attempts were made at playing it and the storyline felt super disjointed. I feel like I am just not enough of a fan of the martial arts movie genre for this to really be my thing. I tried a big gruff humanoid and I also tried a little squirrel person but in neither case did I really feel engaged with the characters or the narrative being told. I played a little in the localized beta and actually bought in at launch because I had some friends who were also playing… and I probably lasted a week before wandering away like a bored toddler.

Guild Wars 2

Guild Wars 2 and I have a fraught relationship. I was an Alpha tester for this game and I remember the insane process required to get into it. I had to sign a bunch of paperwork, get it notarized and then physically mail it back into Arena Net before about a month later being granted access to the game. Everything was directed four hour blocks of testing and during that time you were required to be on Ventrilo. The first two hours were focused on whatever the Arena Net team wanted tested specifically, so like we were all directed to create new Asura and see how far we could make it through the zone before the time limit. After that initial two hours we got free play where we could do anything else in the game. The problem being… I just did not enjoy the game and I didn’t really grasp what it was trying to do. As a result I resigned from the Alpha test and had my credentials pulled, thinking I would just walk away knowing that the game ” wasn’t for me”. Then I found myself getting engaged with it again because once more I was caught up in the whirlwind of internet hype… only to similarly realize that the things that the game is doing just isn’t really for me. I’ve returned and bounced so many times since then because on some level I really WANT to love this game. It is doing something interesting but I just struggled to engage with it. Right now pretty much all of the AggroChat folks are playing on a regular basis and I would love to feel happy to do the same… but I just don’t like the gameplay.

Phantasy Star Online 2

I jumped through a lot of hoops to play this game and battled the Hiragana boss in 2018 to play the Japanese version of this game. I never realized how hard it was to match hand written characters to computer generated characters…. because a lot of them looked super similar. I love Phantasy Star Online 2 but the problem is that when we got the game officially in 2020… it was effectively a ten year old game and it FEELS like a ten year old game. I still enjoy it greatly and at some point need to return to it, but what I am really looking forward to is the reboot that should be releasing at some point during 2021. I want to play this game… but re-imagined with more cogent gameplay and not quite as many nonsense systems. I have extremely love for PSO2 but hope that the reboot is going to be exactly what I am looking for.

The Secret World

Oh the deep burning flame that I have in my heart for what this game might have been. I am super into the occult/secret society/horror storyline of The Secret World. Much like Rift this game promised a system of being able to pick from a bunch of different skill lines and design a class of your own tailored towards your tastes. As a result I went with a Blades and Shotgun build that focused on exploiting the penetration weakness that both weapon lines could provide. I think the nail in the coffin for The Secret World is that we wanted to be way too serious about the game too quickly. The dungeons were all really fun and then after we beat the game… we started working through the Elite versions of the dungeons which were also phenomenally good. However when we started working on Nightmare versions of the dungeons we hit a massive wall. It turns out that none of us were playing optimized enough classes to deal with putting out the level of damage and healing required to progress through that content. After some tweaks we tried a few things to make viable classes and did manage to make some progress… but in many cases that forced us down paths that we didn’t want to go down. The characters we were playing were no longer the design we had in our minds that we enjoyed so much to that point. The game as a whole had phenomenal storytelling and I stayed thoroughly engaged through the first Issues released. I need to at some point to give Secret World Legends a proper try. I did the account linkage thing to make sure my stuff transferred over given that I was a lifetime subscription holder, but past that I didn’t do much.

ArcheAge

So this is another one of those games that on paper seemed like the perfect adventure for me. I love crafting and I have loved player housing systems in games. I went far down the playing housing rabbit hole in both Everquest II and Rift. However the one sticking point that ArcheAge has is the fact that it allows players to negatively impact the lives of each other. I remember my experience from alpha testing went a little something like this. Early on in the game you reach this point where you have to cross a channel with a rowboat. I was somewhat late getting access to the game and when I got to this point… there were a number of way higher progressed players with much bigger boats and a number of them would sit around in this channel and capsize the poor little rowboats as they attempted to cross. I am pretty sure there is a group of griefers that bounces from game to game making the lives of other players hell. A few years after release a number of us returned and the game as a whole was really enjoyable, but also very South Korean… so the story was sort of nonsense. I played a Catman fighter type character and had a lot of fun but eventually wandered away from it.

Defiance

I cannot with any certainty tell you why that I did not latch onto this game with both hands. I played it a bit in Alpha and Beta and then played it a bit more after it launched. I loved the Television show but it sorta felt like the blending between TV and game wasn’t near as smooth as I would have hoped. It was a VERY ambitious project and I wish the Television serious had managed to last a bit longer. This game however will go down as having one of the best soundtracks out there. I still listen to it regularly. I remember there being some weirdness with the user interface and it suffering a bit from what I now refer to as “The Borderlands Problem”. Not all weapons are created equal and in this sort of game I find myself gravitating towards one specific weapon type. Since loot is so random however you cannot with any frequency guarantee to keep upgrading your favorite archetype. When I have to play with a gun that I don’t like… because it is not much better than old faithful… my enjoyment lags. This is a problem I have dealt with in Destiny and Division as well and I remember it absolutely being a thing with Defiance.

Dragon’s Prophet

I feel like I was probably one of six players that were super into this game. For starters it had either the absolute worst trailer or absolute best trailer depending on your proclivities. It also suffered from having a pretty horrible name, but the hook for me was the fact that you could tame new dragons to fight with you. This alone should have been enough for most people, but I feel like it wasn’t adequately advertised. Unfortunately this was one of the first casualties of Sony Online Entertainment thinning the herd ahead of the eventual Daybreak purchase. I remember it having pretty fun action based combat… but really it was dragon taming that made me super happy. Apparently it kept functioning in Taiwan and Europe until 2020 when it ceased operation in May. I had zero clue that this was a thing until doing some research this morning. I would have probably kept playing occasionally were it an option because it was pretty great.

Echo of Soul

Echo of Soul or EOS… I have to admit that I played this game in large part because I was paid to. Some of you might not remember this time in the life of Belghast where I briefly was a freelance writer for MMOGames.com. One of the games that I was asked to write about was Echo of Soul, who was a significant advertiser for the website. This is one of the most generic fantasy games I have ever played and it suffers from many things I have hated about South Korean free to play games like temporary bag space and mount rentals. The combat was aggressively mediocre and the story was sort of this vague amorphous fantasy shaped blob that gave you the impression that there was something there… but only really enough to justify you going to the next quest giver. It comes from an era when free to play games were rare and unique… and folks who couldn’t afford to buy a game were just happy to have something to play. Now there are so many better options out there.

Bitterness Ensues

I am somewhat concerned that it feels like the longer I write about these the more bitter I get about various MMO tropes. I have no clue if this is entertaining at all for anyone but 45 games in I am starting to question my wisdom for going down this path. However now that I am on it… I want to see it through to the end.

7 thoughts on “MMOs Nostalgia Thread – Part 3”

  1. This list has more of the games I’ve played on it. Rift is where we met, actually, and also the first game Scooter and I played fresh (I’d introduced her to WoW and STO). (I’m also working backward from your 23 Feb post).

    STO was the first game that broke the hold WoW had on my wallet, though I regret never trying Guild Wars before GW2 came out. I loved aspects of the space combat, and the surface combat. . . less so. I did like have the Away team, but it was a lot to manage. I also remember the frustration with space combat still essentially having an up and down, with no good way to dive or fight three-dimensionally. Anyway, I was there more for the story opportunities and head-RP, as can seen in my blog archives.

    SWTOR, what can I say, I think it was the last real chance for a WoW killer, between BioWare’s development chops and and the Star Wars brand. Alas ’twas not to be. I never even managed to finish the basic story for every class (Legendary status). I need to complete the trooper, but probably never will.

    TSW was the game I got most involved in the community, being on a podcast and everything. But in the end, the ability to be anything meant you were expected to be everything, even if the optimal build went against your character (class) fantasy. So much I found intriguing about the story and ability wheel progression, but in the end it was too much grimdark. I guess I’m not as much of a Lovecraftian as I thought. My very brief foray into SWL was disappointing.

    Finally, GW2, the game I’m still playing. I love being able to drop in and out, even though in practice, it’s the only thing we’re playing right now. I love the gameplay, though I can see how being told what to play/test would make it seem like a chore, and turn you off of the game.

  2. It’s a fun journey (thanks for the post series inspiration btw), but ultimately a sad one. So much potential for these games that remained unfulfilled (Rift, The Secret World), or games that started strong but faded (SWTOR). GW2 never lived up to the hype for me or my hubby either – we loved the world and the characterisation of the races, but the actual gameplay never gelled with our tastes (and became an increasing barrier to us even progressing in later patches).

    I hadn’t heard about the PSO2 remake, that is interesting, as just like your comment, when I tried it last year I thought immediately how dated the gameplay felt – kind of like Vindictus in space or some other ultra-linear instanced battler RPG…

  3. As somebody who was a Star Trek fan before there was Star Wars, bouncing off of STO was a pretty easy thing to do. Space combat wasn’t tactical enough to replace some of the few great Star Trek video games, like Starfleet Command, while the story wasn’t engaging enough to hook you in with a story line you cared about.

    I understand it got better as time went along, but in trying to play it from launch for about a year, it did little to grab me and I felt I was pretty much in the prime interest demographic.

      • Yeah, the foundry was a neat idea, but game updates kept breaking it in both games, and then the person who put in the extra effort to keep it going apparently left the company and that was the end of that. I never did anything with it in STO, but our group ran some Neverwinter stuff, including a series of remakes of WoW dungeons that were pretty funny.

  4. There is no image for Rift…
    For me, Rift was my home away from WoW. Quite, albeit virtually, literally even because it does have housing which WoW still does not have. Rift lost me because the whole story had started very… abstract already (for lack of a better word here) and it became so detached from what I want to see and live in in a fantasy world (the nightmare expansion being the worst for me) that I only logged on for working on my dimensions. And when Trion sold the game to gamigo, I just felt that this was the last bit… no hope left of the game getting any of its spirit back that I felt it had when I first started playing it!

    Your insight into the alpha test of GW2 is quite fascinating. I don’t think I would have liked to do that. When I am told to play X or Y for Z amount of time before I can decide what or how I want to play, I usually lose interest immediately. :p

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